Suchergebnisse

In the 1980s, ecofeminism and the U.S. Green movement seemed to offer some of this country's most powerful and promising solutions to problems of social and environmental justice. A decade later, ecofeminism has become more a perspective than a movement, and divisions within the Greens have deepened as its national focus has shifted from issue-based politics to party building. Why have these movements faltered? A member of both movements, Greta Gaard bases her analysis on her personal experience as well as extensive secondary sources and interviews with key theorists, activists, and speakers

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Looking for Home -- Year One: History and Identity -- Women/Water -- Family of Land -- Year Two: Place and Workplace -- Whatcom Creek -- Wilderness -- Year Three: Home/Economics -- Climbing -- Silver Lake -- Year Four: Oil and Water -- Explosion -- Body, Midlife -- Year Five: Impermanence -- Food and Shelter -- The Dance -- Epilogue -- The Headwaters -- Acknowledgments -- Bibliography -- Credits -- About the Author

Formulated in the 1980s and gaining prominence in the early 1990s, by the end of that decade ecofeminism was critiqued as essentialist and effectively discarded. Fearing their scholarship would be contaminated by association with the term "ecofeminism," feminists working on the intersections of feminism and environmentalism thought it better to rename their approach. Thirty years later, current developments in allegedly new fields such as animal studies and naturalized epistemology are "discovering" theoretical perspectives on interspecies relations and standpoint theory that were developed by feminists and ecofeminists decades ago. What have we lost by jettisoning these earlier feminist and ecofeminist bodies of knowledge? Are there features of ecofeminism that can helpfully be retrieved, restoring an intellectual and activist history, and enriching current theorizing and activisms? By examining the historical foundations of ecofeminism from the 1980s onward, this article uncovers the roots of the antifeminist backlash against ecofeminism in the 1990s, peeling back the layers of feminist and environmentalist resistance to ecofeminism's analyses of the connections among racism, sexism, classism, colonialism, speciesism, and the environment. Recuperating ecofeminist insights of the past thirty years provides feminist foundations for current liberatory theories and activisms.

Although many ecofeminists acknowledge heterosexism as a problem, a systematic exploration of the potential intersections of ecofeminist and queer theories has yet to be made. By interrogating social constructions of the "natural," the various uses of Christianity as a logic of domination, and the rhetoric of colonialism, this essay finds those theoretical intersections and argues for the importance of developing a queer ecofeminism.

O presente texto propõe uma mudança de rumo para o ecofeminismo. Se a conexão simbólica entre mulheres e natureza era criticada por essa perspectiva teórica, a discussão sobre os modos pelos quais nossa imagem de natureza é heterossexualizada e as conexões entre diversidade sexual e natureza não eram exploradas. Gaard afirma que a cultura ocidental é fundada em um medo ou repulsa não apenas de práticas homoafetivas, mas do erotismo como um todo. A isso chama erotofobia, e é por causa dela que práticas sexuais-afetivas não reprodutivas são entendidas como desvio moral ou perversão. Para mostrar que a erotofobia está na raiz de muitas práticas, Gaard analisa a história do cristianismo e da colonização da América, tentando mostrar que nesses exemplos históricos podemos ver como as conexões entre a opressão de mulheres, das sexualidades queer, de pessoas não brancas e da natureza estão interligadas. Esse cuidado em pensar tais ligações e uma vontade de repensar e liberar o erótico caracterizariam uma perspectiva queer para o ecofeminismo.